The the communicators looked at technology and its impact on voting and democracy recently. With speakers at the straight of the net con present held in washington, dc. Heres a look. Couldy harbath is the Global Politics director for facebook. What does that entail . Guest being in the Global Politics in government outreach director means dismiss my team, who are situated across the world, work with governments, elected officials, candidates, on how to best use facebook to communicate with citizens and then we also help to work on facebooks overall efforts in elects, which includes protecting the integrity of elections on our platform, whether threw preventing foreign interference, affection accounts, et cetera, and then helping people how to use the Civic Engagement tools in the political process. Host lets go to the first one. People said you didnt do a very good jo in 2016. Guest certainly thing that happened on our platform in 2016 that shouldnt have and we take great responsibility of making sure we can, going forward, take the steps we need to prevent interference on our platform. We did a lot in 217 with elects in france and germany for instance, and he were more than doubling our team here in 2018 to look at elections noh just the United States but italy, chroma, mexico and brazil. Host other recent headlines from a blog post. It says facebook admits social media sometimes harms democracy. Is that fair. Guest i think what we at facebook and are trying to do this head hard questions blog is bring outward the discussion of these sort of hard questions we have to grapple with. Things on our platform did happen in 2016 that shouldnt have. But theres also a lot of positive aspects that facebook can bring to democracy and that social media can bring to democracy. We are trying to take a critical look at ourselves to understand where we need to get better and also to engage the broader bryant because we cant do it without them and we want to make sure anything we do has a positive ill pact. Host at what point is facebooks responsibility over and its up to the individual to figure it out. Guest i think its a lot the Broader Community has unique roles they need to play when it comes to protecting the integrity of elections, not just online but across the board. Were trying to take steps to help people to better identify where there might be false news, to try to provide them different perspectives, where different parties stand on the issues. We do false News Public Service announcements to help people think through how to to detect what is or is not false news. We are engaging the Broader Community so everybody can do their part. Host there is a censorship here here . We dont take down false news. We would downrank it but if people want to rate, even they just go through our warnings, they can still do 0 so oregon platform. So were trying to strike the right balance here and its more about helping people to be more critical consumers when using information versus being he are bit to t ares arbiters of truth officers. Host can you bee in media and not have a facebook presence. Guest i dont think facebook is something that helps people win elections but its a Political Tool for code us to get their mess yap out. Host what are you doing here the state of the net conference. Guest were on a panel here about discussingitys discussing internets role. Host what is your maintain point . Guest that we at affection are taking our responsibility seriously about protecting the integrity of elects on our plant and making sure we launch products that can help more people have a voice. Host what is one product. Guest our perspective product where if clicks on a link about the election, we havent launched it yet in the just but have overseas. People get to see where the different parties or candidate stand on the issue and something were hoping to bring here to the United States for the midterm. Host in the election process, we look forward to having you bang orr the communicators. Guest thank you so much. Now joining us on the communicators is dr. Candace hoke, who is with the Marshal Center for Cyber Security and privacy protection. Candace hoke, what is that. Guest we have an interdisciplinary Cyber Security and Privacy Research and to some degree an Advocacy Center on on off our educational role. Were trying to provide a range of services to the business, legal, and educational communities to understand the needs for greater Cyber Security and the sort of mechanisms by which better security and privacy goals can be achieved. Host this is marshal is a law school in cleveland. Guest yes. Host what is the connection between Cyber Security and the law. Guest well, the law has been rather late in coming to the Cyber Security table. We perceived a gap in the forwardings that lawyers need in order to be able to properly advise and support their business as well as permanent clients in achieving their goals. Now that so much business is run either on the internet or through computerized information systems. So, theres huge issues that lawyers need to understand. Host has the law kept up with cybersecurity . Have lawmakers been protective when it comes to cybersecurity. Guest incestly. And in part, its because many of our lawmakers are lawyers who were not trained in any of these technical subjects, and also i think the view has been that perhaps its better for the law to have a light touch rather than interfere with the inmotivatetive capacity of our business sector. The problem there is that the market has not adequately addressed Security Issues or privacy issues and theres a role for informed government policy. We flood the policymakers to be better informed and need the lawyers to be better informed, and truly, the commercial sector as well as the lives of average americans will be better if we foster greater cybersecurity and privacy protection. Host here at the state of the net conference, what are you speaking on . Guest election cybersecurity, which is my area of specialty. Elections and Voting Systems. Host are Voting Systems there is unhackable Voting System. Guest very good question. All Voting Systems we have produced thus far are hackable to some degree if theyre based on computers and software. If we use paper Ballot Systems, where the voter marks a paper ballot or directs a machine, even one with software to mark a paper ballot, the voter can look at the ballot, affirm these are my choices. It can be count by software but then we have that paper record to check to see if the machine has cheated. If it has been hacked. Unfortunately, large numbers of voters in this country are using Software BasedVoting Systems that have no paper records or no voter creatinged paper records and the minnesota can cheat. Presumptively, they are cheating, because its easy to cheat, and its almost undetectable in many cases. So part of what senator klobuchar was speaking about at the beginning of this conference today, was the importance of our recognizing and redressing the problems with the election vulnerabilities and particularly Voting Systems, but also the larger Election Office problems, because we have never funded our Election Offices at the level that is needed in order to protect them from hacking, whether its from cybercriminals or nation state actors like rich, or just domestic partisans. Host now, dr. Hoke you said presumptively these machines can be or have been hacked. Do we have proof of an election outcome baited on hacking . Guest another very good question. Part thief trouble are our laws that prevent the ability to look at election equipment to see if it has been hacked. In fact there have been lawsuits, including in 2016, jill steins lawsuit, which south forensic evaluations in several different states and were blocked each and every time. These laws were veil wish based above softwarebased equipment but our Companies Know that they must be able to audit foreign sickly eval was their own equipment to see if there has been accounting errors, whether thats been hacking against their database, and were preventing our own election boards and election equipment from being evaluated. Now, in some cases, we would be able to discover whether hacking had occurred, but many other cases, some really smart hacks hack with no leave no trace or very little unless theres a very sew tis tick indicate he hammer. As senator klobuchar said we have proof of nation state, particularly russian attacks on particularly our Voter Registration databases in 2016 and before. We were looking a little more then in part because the department of Homeland Security contacted me in early july of 2016, and wanted to know what should they be doing some i sort of laid out different kinds of problems that i thought they should be attending to, and so that was im very happy they did start paying attention. Host what were in of the recommendationouts gave to dhs . Guest well issue said you should be watching russia, in particular, and you need to Pay Attention to and set up operations that would allow you to be able to discern whether there are probes or attacks on Election Offices or election networks. We really need to be able to know early enough so that we can put a stop to it. We dont have that kind of capability in most states and certainly not for election jurisdictions. Theyre so underfunded, and theyve never had the Security Operations that say a Large Company would have, that has significant, say, attractiveness to hackers. Now, banks, of course, are highly attractive for all sorts of cybercriminals, so are healthcare institutions because the healthcare records are marketable at a very high dollar rate. Most people before 2016 kept denying that elections were attractive because they kept saying things like, theres no financial value, and we would say, meaning my colleagues and the Election Integrity movement, would say, come on, now, in the u. S. Economy and the u. S. Military and the u. S. Budget, the large nest the world, this is not value that someone would want to control through manipulating our investments our election systems . Why would you say our banks but not our government . Why would you say not our elections . So, unfortunately, the denears had control over the decisionmaking until the information came out in 2016. Host so, the commonwealth of virginia returned a complete paper ballot and took off their guest they did, congratulations. Host congratulations. Guest congratulations to them that is what most Computer Security specialists and the vote Security Specialists would say, thats exactly what needs to happen. Nationwide. Because no matter what happens in virginia, they and many other states moved to this system there will be that voter created paper record that can be audited as they check on the Voting System. We just need to make sure that were going to have statistically valid auditing built in as a routine, not as a result of litigation. It needs to be we need to understand just like business entities and now the government as well, we must audit our systems constantly. We must to determine whether they are cheating on us, whether they have them programmed to cheat, whether they just have a malfunction. You audit. Thats why we have big auditing entities in the nice right now and legal compulsion for business dozen use internal and external audits. This is basic quality assurance. No one should be fearful of auditing elects and to build it into our processes. Thats the security, thats the transparency for the american public, for the Voting System vendors so they can show which ones are actually able to count correctly, for Election Officials who are charged by law to deliver honest, fair, transparent elects. So, yes, that is the answer. We dont have to completely ditch computer based election equipment. We just have to use the proper checks on that equipment. Then we also have to invest in our election systems excuse me our offices so they have the kind of equipment and Network Architecture so they can prevent cyberhacking to to greatest depossible, but if it occurs they can discover it and recover. Thats the resilience aspect. Senator klobuchar was mentioning the bipartisan bill that senator graham, Lindsay Graham and she are sponsor examines they have a similar one in the house. That seeks to fund the paper Ballot Systems in all the states that dont have them, with the odd did, plus the Election Security consulting to upgrade our Election Offices. Its a travesty that we could think we could run Fair Elections in this day and time without those two componentses so, why arent we doing this . So, im very hopeful that we will redress this problem. Host finally, dr. Hoke, when you see at def con or black hatt a voting machine hack within minute guest i was. There was a speak. Host do you have suspicioned about the 2016 election . Sunny . I have suspicions about any ickesly equipment and elections run without the auditing capacity and routine auditing. Why . Because, as ive said previously, that is basically saying to the world of hackers, come here, hack us, we wont be checking, we are a piece of cake for you. So you can hack our elections completely undiscovered. Thats true for the largest voting jurisdictions in pennsylvania, whole states, like georgia. Why would be allow this . Why would any state . Why would our nation allow our election systems to basically be run at this level of, say, i ininittitude. Denial of the threat. Maintain security issue, fundamental democracy issue, fundamental fairness issue. We need to redress this. Host candace hoke, the Foundation Director of the Marshall Law School center for cybersecurity and privacy protection. Guest thank you so much. Block. Host now on the communicators we want to introduce you ambassador karen kornbluh, ambassador, where did you get that title . Guest i was ambassador to the organization for check accommodation development, which is a Multilateral Organization in paris, france, and i did that in the first term of the obama administration. Host your background is rather varied and we want to talk to you about the digital background. How could you use that at the oecd. Guest ive been work on internet policy for two decade. When i got 0 to to the oecd i knew it had been part of the process of taking the u. S. Framework for regulating the internet and socializing it overseas, but that consensus, they international consensus, was starting to fray as russia and china and other countries were coming in and wanted a more havehanded regulation of internet but some countries that want to have more authoritarian control. So we used the oecd and did oecd internet policymaking principles that said, we need have a free flow of information across countries. Bus we need to but we need to have individual countries do their own policymaking, whether Consumer Protection or privacy but across the country it needs to be free flow and respect for human righted. We got 34 countries to sign on to that. That was an interesting time. I think well talk today about the fact that at that period of time, 2010, 2011, we were talking about internet freedom, we were seeing the internet being used to disrupt countries in the middle east and bring democracy so there was that kind of attitude, and now we see something a very different attitude. Host lets go back to that era and that was the arab spring. Guest exactly. Host we also saw where egypt could essentially flip a switch and cut off internet traffic. To that country. I thought the internet was borderless. Guest thats really interesting. It can be borderless. But what we have seen is the thing i think we need to focus on right now is it turns out that this medium we thought was going to give voice to the voiceless, and in many cases did, and power to powerless, can also be used by dictators, by terrorists, by dark political money, to undermine democracy, and we have got to address that problem. Host do you think that the 2016 election was undermined. Guest well host via the internet. Guest we now have a lot of data. Just right now we got some data about on twitter, there were russian linked 200 million bots. On facebook ads, russian ira, one of the troll factories, in russia, was responsible for 146 million add impressions. We only have 138 million voters the scale of this is quite amazing, and when you look at what that means for our democracy, you know, whether it meat a difference or not, is a an interesting debate. What it means for democratic debate, the example that sticks with me is there were two fake groups set up in texas, one called heart of texas, a secessionist group. Another called, united muslims of america. Both fake groups set up on facebook by russian trolls. They organized dueling rallies, the russians did, of americans, on the same day in may, in houston in front of an islamic center. That doesnt sound like democracy to me. Sounds like something we need t